Sri Lanka’s national carrier has cut its flights to India by half, a report said Wednesday.

‘Sri Lankan Airlines has slashed flights to India from 100 a week to 51, as part of a cost-cutting strategy and re-aligning of services to conserve cash and maximize yields,’ Lanka Business Online (LBO) quoting a top airline official said.

‘In the first quarter of the financial year starting March 2008, the airline lost almost 50 million US dollars, on core airline operations, but progressively in the next two to three quarters we’ve managed to stem this loss significantly,’ Manoj Gunewardena, chief executive officer of the airline has been quoted as saying.

‘In the two months of December and January we have managed to break even on operations. With the financial year almost over the airline would end on a minus, though cash flows have stabilized,’ Gunewardena told LBO in an interview Saturday.

According to LBO, the carrier has lost 6.1 billion rupees in 2008 on core airline operations but ended the year with a 4.8 billion rupee profit, with aircraft sales bringing capital gains.